Morocco to try German for huge cocaine haul
Morocco, Local, 7/14/1997

Morocco said on July 11 it would try four Colombians and a German for smuggling six tons of pure cocaine, which local experts estimated was worth 1.5 billion US dollars.

"Four Colombians traveling with false Panamanian passports and a German were arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking," Moroccan Interior Minister Driss Basri told a news conference in Rabbat.

Security officials and King Hassan's top advisor Andre Azoulay Basri said the cocaine washed up on Morocco's Atlantic coast in the second week of last June.

The first cocaine was discovered last month by children and fishermen on a Casablanca beach when they opened plastic bags and tasted the white powder inside which they thought was milk powder, the minister said.

Regional governor Moheiddine Amzazi said that in June, a ship named Duanas sailed for a high sea zone off of the Canary Islands where the crew took on board the cocaine imported from Cartagena, northern Colombia, for the Spanish province of Glicia. On its way to Spain, the ship "had engine troubles" off the coast near Casablanca. It called for emergency assistance which was granted by Moroccans, he said.

The drug cargo was thrown overboard before the arrival of Moroccan patrol units to rescue the ship, he added.

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